1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system or assembly for holding selected sets of medical instruments or tools during sterilization and storage prior to use and for presenting them in a logical order when they are being used to perform a particular surgical procedure.
Different surgical procedures require the use of different sets of instruments or tools, the number of tools in the set depending upon the complexity of the procedure. For example, for a tooth implant, the instrument or tool set may include a twist drill, a drill extension, a driver, and various size screws. Sometimes the set includes duplicate tools in the event one breaks. If more than one implant is involved in the procedure, more and/or different tools may be required than for a single implant. Thus prior to a particular surgical procedure, the surgeon determines or knows from experience which instruments will be required. Those instruments are gathered together as a set, placed in a container which is packaged in a plastic package and then sterilized either chemically or in an autoclave. The packaged instrument set is then stored in that sterile condition until ready for use. When the surgeon is ready to perform the procedure, the container is brought to the operating room and opened exposing the still sterile instruments therein. At the end of the procedure, the instruments may be returned to the container and sent to a cleaning and sterilization facility.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The basic concept of organizing surgical instruments or tools into sets for subsequent sterilization, storage and presentation is not new; see for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,518,115. Shown there is a perforated sterilization container including a removable cover and an internal tray or rack for supporting a set of medical instruments in an organized manner. More particularly, the instruments are vertically supported in grommets mounted to the tray at spaced-apart locations thereon. Graphics may be imprinted on the tray to identify the instruments at particular locations in the container.
While that assembly is satisfactory in many respects, it is disadvantaged in that it does not take into account the fact that the numbers of instruments in the sets required for different procedures may vary over a wide range. For example, perhaps only three or four tools may be required to perform a single tooth implant while many more tools may be needed for a procedure involving multiple tooth implants. Therefore, the “one size fits all” container disclosed in the above patent must be dimensioned to accommodate the largest set of tools or instruments required for the most complex surgical procedure. This means that if the container is used to sterilize and store a small set of instruments, the container would be mostly empty and thus waste sterilizer and shelf space. Likewise, that container may be too large to fit in the small sterilizers found in some physician offices and clinics.
Another disadvantage of that patented container is that the grommets which support the instruments must be removed from the internal tray following surgery because blood and tissue collect in the spaces between the grommets and the tray. This adds to the cost of cleaning and maintaining that container assembly.